North Carolina State University Athletics
Quotes From Chuck Amato's Weekly Press Conference
10/30/2000 12:00:00 AM | Football
On FSU:
"You can analyze this game anyway you want. Florida State is the gold
standard of college football just like Duke is in college basketball.
They have a nick in their belt. That nick is keeping them from what they
want and what their goal is every single year. They are awfully good
football team. If they have a shortcoming, it's their kicking game. They
don't need one. Enough said. There is no sense belittling everyone. Had
they run the football 52 times two years ago, they would only have one
ACC loss. If they had done that against Virginia, they would have no
losses. When they pass and they have four wide, they have one-on-one
matchups on the offensive line. Those guys up front do not get beat. When
they started running the football, the offensive line went unnoticed."
"We've won five games, no matter how we've won them, we've won. First one was double overtime. Second one we're losing by 12 points with 4 and 1/2 minutes to go in the game. Those wins were big for us because they showed some character."
"On who comes up with trick plays:
Its a collaboration. Everybody has a few things they can throw out
there. I have a notebook collection of useless knowledge from every
season I was a coach. Our coaches are pretty sharp. That is the advantage
of getting people from all over. They wanted excitement here in Raleigh,
and we are having it."
On keeping players in the game to the end:
"We don't have a lot of people available to be playing right now. Our
linebacker situation is getting very critical. Edrick Smith is going to
have a shoulder operation. Clayton White has already had an operation
and will hopefully be back for the Duke game. Things are getting real
scary. The time Philip got hit late, someone said get him out. I said
KEEP HIM IN. I've seen him do it before, I don't want to take him out
because I want him to fight through it and then I will take him out. He
is a tough youngster whose eyes got real wide open on Saturday. I want to
get him out but he is just a youngster, and Lord knows he has picked
himself off the ground and wiped his pants off and gone back in the
huddle and done good. We sure done want him injured."
On who can fill in at linebacker with Edrick and Clayton injured
"We are hoping Clayton White will be back. One of those freshman will
have to get in there and work in practice. I'm even thinking about
giving Brian Jamison a possible look at linebacker. He's got the ability
and is a tough youngster and seems to learn pretty good. Pollard. Chip
Thomas is someone we can put in there because he is the bigger of the
other two."
"At Clemson, we were so close to beating the number five team in the country in their backyard at a point in time when nobody gave us even a nearest possibility of staying close and to have come so close. We felt that if there were five more minutes we would have gotten them because we had momentum on our side. That one ran out of time, this one I wish it would have ran out of time after the first period was over. I don't like to lose the game. But we got blown out, but they have blown out some other people this year and they will continue to. They're that good. At the end of the first period I was excited, I really was. We were moving the ball halfway decent, and doing some things."
"What are we going to do now? We started it, but our slogan was finish. Are we going to finish it? If we just do business every week for four more weeks we can really have a season that we sure did not anticipate and the people did not anticipate having, and that would be a great building block. But let's not talk about the future let's talk about one game at a time. We have two games at home and two on the road. How are we going to react?"
On Lamont Jordan:
"He always seems to break one big run. He broke a long run against
Florida State this year and two against them on options last year. He's
a load. He's big and strong. He breaks a lot of tackles. One guy is not
going to jump on his back and bring him down."
On lack of success on Maryland's running game:
"Early on Lamont was dinged up and he got a late start because of
academics. That has slowed him down. He has had a couple of 100-yard
games the last two weeks. He seems to get better as the weather gets
cooler. I hope its 85 degrees on Saturday."
On injuries:
"We are at a critical stage at some positions. Other than Edrick, we came
out a lot better than we thought. We have about 70 scholarship players
left and we can't afford any more injuries."
